TTF's Renegade Throwback Thursday!

[Hoist]

Every week I'll share a throwback to yesteryear about the Renegades on a Thursday, it could be a fact, a small piece about a Renegade character, the past or general information. Hopefully I can find something every Thursday! To start with here's a small image Heavy or jazz may/may not remember:



This is a very, very early map I created for a message board where the Renegades were formed, Civil War. Back in the day it was a normal Transformers board, but over time (Much like here) the banter between members was high bonding members together. A thread for Decepticon fans (Decepticons Forever!) was made, lots of banter, I think I made one in return called "Autobots Unite!" or something like that. Unfortunately the admin at the time wanted to move the board, but not to another service provider, that would've been fine, but still to a ProBoard like ourselves. The board was already a ProBoard and we were being moved for the sake of the admin not knowing how to change the look of the board. Most of us were against the move. The however much later was when things really changed.

Overnight, the admin just deleted everything, all the threads, content and banner that had built up (For at least a year I reckon), thus pissing off everyone in the process, not a good way to convince everyone to move. It just enraged everyone and not many moved with the new ProBoard, those that did didn't stay with it. Thus on the old board a rebellion against the then admin "Optimus Prime" started in a thread, we would not move. It was in that thread Heavy proclaimed something about "Renegade Autobots" as we were rebelling against the "Autobot leader" - the owner, "Optimus Prime". The rest you should know, an existing member took over and redeveloped the forum into a role-playing forum where Heavy, myself and Jazz were privileged enough to create the Renegades, a third alternative faction that took on both sides.

The above map was one of the earliest things I made for the Renegades, I'm assuming the initials are:


ww - ?
SB - ?
IC - Iacon
Ply - Polyhex?
DM - Darkmount?
CC _ Captial City? (Though give if IC is Iacon this could be wrong)

I'm not sure if Heavy or Jazz in particular remember what they sttod for, let alone remember the map, but this is our first Thursday throwback! More next week!

[Heavy Handed Assault]

Man...a lifetime ago.
Lol

[Heavy Handed Assault]

Thursday is coming, fact for a fact. DUKE?
What you got?

[Hoist]

There doesn't seem to be enough interest in this, if there is (Other than you) I'll continue it.

[Bomblast]

Doo iiit.

Nice to have a few factoids about the Renegades. We've got some new members, so it could be helpful to them. Even to me, I keep discovering new stuff each time I read about the Renegades.

[Hoist]

Guess that's all the encouragement I need! As I've been reading a lot of old rp stuff latetly, including episode summaries, yesterday's topic will be..

Renegades come and gone... - Jazzmatic



There have been many Renegades come and gone over the years - Jazzmatic, Sharpshot, Banshee, Wreck-tron, Indelible, Stormcloud, Morpher et all. In some of these cases the users playing them have just been busy in real-life, some of the others their character has been killed off in surprize shocks during the original run of our roleplay.

One of the early ones to go was Jazzmatic (Looked like G1 stepper), played by our very own Jazzman Crothers. In the original run of our rp a new race of Decepticons the Destructicons arrived on Cybertron to take control, with them Lord Armada (Name may change in the future) and the Dark Matrix. Using the Dark Matrix he also created an attack team The Assaulticons to counter the Optimus Maximus newly reformatted maximal troops - The Renegades. During the early stages of the war a third race also turned up with the piles and piles of dead bodies - Autobot and Maximal at an uncovered base in the underground tunnels, to become the original Renegade HQ. This race was the Minicons who's existence was known to the Destructicons who tried to create their own. The Renegades managed to save the Minicons from Lord Armada who had captured most of them as prisoners, but it was eventually to be at the cost of the Renegade's leader who was in mid-battle with Lord Armada when the ship exploded. Jazzmatic had his own Minicon - Cheapshot.

During the rescue however, the distraction team (The other Renegade team being the rescue team), were in New Cystral City saving refugees from an attack by a couple of Destructicons. Team consisted of Optimus Maximus, Nightshade and Jazzmatic. Maximus and his team were about to defeat the Destructicons invading Crystal city when the Omega Sentinals Scarrunner re-activated showed up. Jazzmatic was thought to be destroyed. Maximus and Nightshade were driven off as the Omega Sentinals chased them. Scarrunner and the rest took Jazzmatic back to Darkmount. Lord Armada returned to the Nemisis when he was unable to make contact with his giant warship. When he arrived he saw that the ship was damaged from the outside and that the Minicons were gone. The Renegade team coming from the Nemesis were contacted by L7 who received a distress call from Maximus. Quickly Renegade troops were dispatched from the base and rescue team found Maximus and Nightshade in the waste lands being followed by the Omega Sentinals. A battle quickly broke up with the Renegade destroying the Guardians. But before they returned to base, Jazzmatic returned saying that he escaped Darkmount. In the last half of the war The Destruction seeker Rainstorm had been creating a deadly virus, but ended u p infecting himself and other Destructions - including Armada. When Rainstorm released the virus onto some of the refugees, some of the Renegades were also infected with the virus. Perceptor and Hoist tried to temporary fix those they coukd but things took a shocking turn when Jazzmatic suddenly turned on his team mated and open-fired.

The Renegades learned that Jazzmatic had been re-pprogrammedby Scarrunner and now carried a copy of the Seeker in his brain instead of Jazzmatic. But Jazzmatic was stopped by the Bounty Hunter Death's Head, who was unaware of Rainstorm's plans and was himself infected with the virus.. He told the Renegades this was not the doing of Armada and that another was responsible and had to be found. After the loss of Armada and Maximus, the war came to a stand-still and one year later the Renegades were invited to Join the Autobots in Jekka City by the new Autobot leader - Emirate Vector Primus. Latryx7 didn't trust him as Maximus had not before him, and the Emirate felt likewise only his first office Highway felt different and had been friends with various Renegades before they actually became Renegades. During the Ceremonies the Destructicons returned and Highway was killed during which. The battle was stopped when a mysterious calling was heard all across Cybertron - by all factions. It seemed to be emanating from one of the moons where the Renegade ship Utopia had crashed. (Result of explosion that took Maximus and Armada's lives).

The Destruticon scientist Viracon had entered New Iacon undetected and ventured to a secret lab that once belonged to the now dead Destructicon scientist Rainstorm. There he started to work and experiment on a few Cybertronians he had captured. As-well, he discovered a imprisoned minicon named Cheapshot. The Minicon had once belonged to the Renegade deceased Jazzmatic, whose head was the only thing left of him, hanging inside the lab. Viracon had planned to bring the dead seeker Scarrunner back to life using Jazzmatic's dis-embodied head, he succeeded and the prisoner Cheapshot (In chains) was last seen going into New Iacon with the Destructions.

[Jazzman Crothers]

Wow! Talk about flash back! I remember the later stuff in your post but not Jazzmatic's betraying the Renegades. I knew I killed him, like so many of my Renegades, but not like this.

I know what happened to Cheapshot later on. Won't spoil that just now. But man I loved Cheapshot a lot. I always thought I snagged the best name for a Targetmaster/Minicon back then.

And look at how much we have used Crystal City/Omega City and the Guardians/Omega Sentinels!

Keep it coming Hoist!!

[Hoist]

That's good, because after [Cheapshot] going with the Destructicons to Iacon, I couldn't find any more info. Not without a load of mass reading anyway. The above is a mix from rp stuff I've read and the summaries which I have been trying to do a new draft of lately. Not really changing anything of your originals - just the odd turn of phrase, paragraphing etc. The boring stuff an author's editor might do. XD Plus with ProBoards old word count episode #5 had to be split into 3 posts originally, whereas, there isn't really that limit any more.

I think I will keep it fortnightly though, gives me plenty of time to plan, although I have an idea for the next one. SO the next one will be next Thursday.

[Jazzman Crothers]

If you find anymore on Vendetta let me know.

And Scarrunner too. I can't remember what my villains were like anymore!

[Hoist]

Will do Jazz.

I keep forgetting to do this, then I had a couple of weeks of fluu, then kept forgetting again, but here goes another one!


The History of the Renegade faction symbol.

Believe it or not, when we started the Renegades, our faction symbol was actually red, not grey! The basis of it was always a Generation 2 faction symbol, however. I personally can't remember why of which one of us started using it first (I suspect Jazz!), but obviously we wanted to separate ourselves from the Autobots and Renegades.

Early spinning 'Gade faction symbol



My memory of why we went grey is very sketchy, but at a guess it is obviously very neutral compared to the red of the Autobot faction symbol and the purple of the Decepticons. I've been trying to remember where I saw a grey upside down faction symbol, I thought maybe it was something to do with G2 (UK comics) but I must be mistaken. In my research all I can find is a use by Decepticons in the R.I.D. cartoon (Ruination?). Anyway, my original attempts were very very basic - as were any photoshop/paintshop "skills" I had then, or lack off.



For years it didn't really change much - it just got shinier until the first ever re-design in 2011..

Shinier version of the old faction symbol pre- re-design.


For many years the Renegade faction has become synonymous with our faction, maybe (Or maybe not) the neutral gray has become synonymous - who can say by being distinctive for not being so recognizable as Autobot - Red, Decepticon - purple. It is more than this however. One thing the emblem - no matter what it looks like, has always stood for is friendship, trust and having each others backs among the Renegades. These are the founding values the Renegades were formed on.


I hope to delve deeper next time and find something a bit more interesting to talk about, but it's all relevant I guess. XD

[Jazzman Crothers]

I think your right about where the upside down symbol comes from, but it was HA who says he used the upside down one. However I never saw him using the upside down one so we have to take his word for it. I think he may of had the G2 Autobot symbol on at the Civil War forum and told us to wear it them too.

As for colouring it grey, I don't know who did it first. I do remember colouring a animated GIF, could of been the Renegade logo but I can't remember.

[Hoist]

Sorry it's two days late - it completely slipped my mind! So here is last week's Throwback Thursday!:


How does G1 fit into the Renegade universe?

A question sometimes asked is how does the Renegade universe fit into the G1 universe and vice versa? The answer is quite simple - during, in and around the Generation One universe.

From the very beginning it was a Dying Optimus Prime (Post the events of our fake "Duplicate Prime" and Transformers the movie 1986) that gave Maximus the Creation Matrix/Autobot leadership of Matrix sometime in the future after the year 2005 by Earth terms. Prior to those events, when my character - Hoist returned to Cybertron (After being severely injured at the hands of Underbase Starscream), and eventually worked in the Underground Network for the Autobots before being transferred to the Autobot Moonbase where he met Latryx7. With Hoist's background in maintenance and Latryx being a field medic they had a common goal in fixing the Autobots coming back from the front line. Latryx also an uncanny knock of being able to keep order over the unruly Dinobots.

When Latryx suspected the Optimus was not acting like himself, he shared these thoughts with Hoist - who initially dismissed them They were sent out on a no-win mission where the Decepticons were ready and waiting, always one step ahead of the Autobots. Latryx was convinced there was an Autobot Intel leak, and he and Hoist were only saved on the mission by the very unexpected appearance of the ex-Vehicon HeavyAssault. Although HA is not G1 but from the Beast Wars universe (Formerly the Maximal Rhinox who was reformatted into Tankor by Megatron II. The latter took his name from the great original Decepticon leader Megatron.) As Tankor plotted Megatron II's downfall it also left to his own downfall and close to death, as he was about to return to the All Spark, the Vok (Who had been monitoring the Beast Wars from the beginning.) re-formatted him into a combined personalities of Rhinox and Tankor resulting in HeavyAssault. He was sent back into Cybertron's past to right his wrongs but vowed vengeance on Megatron (II.) During the early years when the Renegades were trying to prove their innocence and claims about an Intel leak/Optimus acting out of character, they were not the only ones who noticed. These included other G1 Autobots such as Blaster, Trailbreaker and Perceptor, who had no idea of a duplicate Prime as the real one was killed on Autobot City during the great push previously. (TFTM86).

When Rodimus Prime took command of the Autobots, he sought out the Renegades and was determined to bring them, but as his time was divided on/off Cybertron he delegated to the likes of Ultra Magnus, Jetfire and Perceptor. With Perceptor being one of Cybertron’s leading scientific minds, was sent on a secret mission to test new technologies out in the Wastelands, Perceptor was thought lost for a long time. In reality, Armada’s minions had captured him. During the storming of the Nemesis, the Renegades rescued their colleague and returned him to Cybertron. As the Eons passed he turned his intellect more to helping the errant Renegades to improve their military equipment. During the search for the Creation Matrix on one of Cybertron's moons, Perceptor joined with the Matrix for a short time and convinced the Autobot Matrix to split from its Destructicon counterpart as the two had merged. Following this separation, Perceptor was severely injured by Destructicon missiles but was repaired and used as a physical avatar by the Autobot Matrix to turn the tide of battle in favor of the Renegades. After a few minutes however Perceptor was obliterated by the returned Armada. Nothing was left but a few shards of armor and his barrel cannon.

During the first RENEGADE war, the Renegades saw of the new wave of Decepticons (Destructicons) and a year after the event were invited to Jekka City to celebrate their freedom, though the Autobots took most of the credit for the RENEGADES work. Despite claims from the new Emirate that the Autobots and Renegade should pull their resources and work together, it was short lived when the Destructicons returned to wreck havoc. The Emirate had no real desire to work with the RENEGADES however and was also subject to an assassination attempt. Much later the Autobot Mirage hosted a great ball and again the Autobots and Renegades came together, this time rudely interrupted by the Intergalactic peace keeping Agent (Not a bounty hunter!); Death's Head. Mirage's loyalty to the Autobots has always been questionable, hell he would have made a good Renegade maybe - had he not snuck into their base and betrayed them. Mirage had become very wealthy in his later life, and that money bought power that was ultimately used against him by the Decepticons/Destructicons. Mirage shut down the stasis units and the dead came back to life in the Renegade base. By this time Hoist had already died previously after their RENEGADE craft was shot sown by Scarrunner. Hoist ordered everyone to evac but decided to stay himself to try and pull the ship up and stop it crashing into an Autobot city where it would kill many millions more. Hoist did not survive. So by the time of the RENEGADE zombie invasion, the Gade Indelible had gone back to the crash site long ago and saved Hoist's spark, keeping it hosted within his own - causing moodiness and split personalities within Indelible. Up to the invasion of the un-dead, Indelible had been working on a new body for Hoist in secret, only eventually telling Latryx7 when they decided the base was too compromised due to the un-dead and to nuke the base.

Hoist, an original G1'er did eventually return in a new body, and much later the RENEGADES also had contact and communications with Grapple, who was now Councillor Grapple, and had long been a friend of Hoists's back on Earth in the 1980's. Ironically with Perceptor's re-birth, he and Blaster also later returned to the Autobot fold. After the war was over, many RENEGADES had either left Cybertron or been killed, but one of the very last Renegades to stay on the planet was Nightshade, spark brother to Ironfist, and - relation to the original Autobot "brothers" Sideswipe and Sunstreaker. Nightshade was eventually captured and chucked in a prison cell, but along with some Autoboto prisoners, managed to escape - with a little help.

You know the rest with the modern day RENEGADE saga, after many years of peace under Optanica Prime,  a elite bunch on Autobots were to become the "Next generation" of RENEGADES, whilst Latryx and Hoist were stationed at the Renegades HQ - Unicron's Head. So as you can see - as I said from the very beginning, the RENEGADE Universe is very much intertwined in and out of the G1 one universe but has since formed it's own little pocket universe, mythos and continuity.

I hope you enjoyed that little read and another look into the RENEGADE universe!

[Jazzman Crothers]

Ok so now a behind the scenes point of view!

So when the Renegades began, being myself, Hoist and Heavy Assault, over at TF: Civil War, a Transformers rig message forum, we were in the middle of a Transformers G1 RPG as it was beginning. So there wasn't any new TF series, not even Aramda yet! So we did have much of anything influencing us expect for G1. There were not beast wars characters on that board, well Heavy Assault was... sort of.... but Heavy Assault is very much his own original character. Plus he hadn't told anyone that he was suppose to actually be Tankor.

So the CW forum and TF@TM were my first TF rpgs ever. Deeply influenced by G1 even as time went on. And back in those days you wanted your characters to some how be linked in the G1 history. 

Now I took over the Renegade RPGs, (actually they were Renegade VS Destructicon RPGs at first) in the middle of the first episode. This was unexpected as Ravage18 just gave over control to me one night (Yikes!) So I had no time to figure anything out expect to just keep going and taking form G1. We borrowed from Armada, Energon and Cybertron but there wasn't much there except for a gimmick or two. 

So with me at the held of the Renegade rpgs, I figured the best continuity to use was the G1 cartoon, loosely. The reason why is because between the end of season two and the movie, you have almost 20 years of time where anything could of happened. Plus the Marvel and UK comics left no room for anything for me to squeeze in! So the G1 cartoon/movie is something of a loose foundation for the Renegades. (See, loose foundations can be a good thing!) PlusHoist likes to us the Underbase story from the comics so there is lots of space for that now!

So now in retrospect, I think its best to leave something out and make up new things. Right now I like pulling bits and pieces from different TF sources as it helps for new stories and to explains things. As of right now I'm working on the Destructicon history and borrowing from here and there. 

[X-BOT]

I need to read more abot Xbot

[Hoist]

I need to read more about xbot as well...